Image – Back FROM The World

Back To The World: Getting Home from the War

March 29, 2026

Vietnam War Veterans Day was established to commemorate the day the last U.S. combat troops departed Vietnam: March 29, 1973. Today I look back onRead More

STREET CLEANING: Down and dirty gut job

SAVORY SELECTIONS: Shallots and garlics and chilies and tumerics and more

MOBILE MEAT MARKET: Beef tendon to go

SENSATIONAL SHOPPING: Touch, taste and smell

HERB MISTRESS: Inhaling the essence of Vietnamese cooking

PIG ON A STICK: BBQ pork is a quintessential street snack of Hanoi

BHUDDA’S HAND: Citrus fruit that’s part medicine, fragrance and flavoring

PICKLED TALONS: Cold and spicy chicken feet go perfect with draught beer

SANDWORM FRITTERS: Seasonal specialty of Hanoi.

BUN CHA AND NEM: Hanoi’s signature dish along with fried spring rolls.

STREET DOUGHNUTS: Fried rice flour cakes dusted with sesame reminiscent of Little Italy’s zeppole

GOOD ANYTIME: A sticky rice dumpling cooked inside a banana leaf that’s ideal for breakfast, snack or lunch

MOBILE GREEN GROCER: Veggies on a who wheeler

OLD QUARTER: Street signs at the edge of town

THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS: Railroad living

RAILROAD LIVING: A train runs through it

TALL AND SLENDER: Tube architecture

RAILROAD LIVING: Keeping track

RAILROAD LIVING: Spitting distance to the tracks

RAILROAD LIVING:

VIETNAMESE CAPPUCCINO: With a cafe den nuam (hot black coffee) nearby

COFFEE TIME: Giang can really stir it up in his hometown of Hanoi

FRENCH COLONIAL: Hanoi Opera House

LAKE LANDING: B-52 Wreckage

WAR RELICS: Fire in the lake

CAFE B-52: Tables with a view

A VISIT TO UNCLE HO: The final resting place

MODERN MAUSOLEUM: The tomb of Ho Chi Minh

NIGHTLIFE: BW in Hanoi

STREET THEATER: Song and dance team inear Hoan Kiem Lake

DATE NIGHT IN HANOI: Yeah, we blend….

GIANG NGUYEN: Tour guide extraordinaire

STREETS & FEETS: Hanoi hustle

PICNIC IN THE PARK: Muong Province street food

YEAR OF THE DOG: Tet greetings in Hanoi

Vegetable stir fry from Hutong Restaurant

Prawns with dried chilies from Hutong Restaurant

LOBSTER AND PORK: Old school, Cantonese style

BRAND BLITZ: High end mall crawl

IN COUNTRY R&R: Vietnam beach “resort”

HONG KONG HOLIDAY: Lunar New Year on Kowloon

HARBOR LIGHTS: Hong Kong has dueling skylines

SOUP DUMPLINGS: Mack’s Noodles’ finest

BLACK CAT AND NOODLES: I like my working class lunch with a touch of class

BW ON THE RISE: Take a ride on the midlevel escalators

CRISPY ROAST CHICKEN: Never had a hem come to a better end

CITRUSY SCALLOPS; Tender and chilled at Hutong

DUELING SKYLINES: Hong Kong in the magic mist

WAN CHAI: Hong Kong’s answer to Williamsburg, Brooklyn

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN: The mechanical kind

MIDLEVEL ESCALATORS: Conguaering the verticality of Hong Kong

MANGO PUDDING: Sweet way to end a Cantonese meal

MALL CRAWL: Easy to get happily lost among the luxury boutiques

Were we ever this young?

HOME AWAY FROM HOME: Welcome to the Americal Division, 23rd Infantry.

ON A BLUFF NEARBY: From our PIO hootch, across a narrow grassy valley, we’d watch the MedEvac choppers land whenever the shit hit the fan in the field.

Somewhere in the Americal AO,

At the Van Col Orphanage, outside the Americal base at Chu Lai, 1971

VAN COI ORPANAGE: Infants, toddlers, right up to adolescents. The orphaned children of Vietnam were one of the saddest aspects of the war.

SMILING THROUGH IT: This little girl’s charm and heart could melt almost that barbed wire when I met her.

Lt. Col. James D. Shumway III, CO of 523rd Signal Battalion, Americal Division, helping deliver donated clothing to the orphanage.

CHRISTMAS PARTY: Huong helps out at the Van Col Orphanage, An Tan, Vietnam, at a celebration provided by soldiers from the Americal Division

From the Spring, 1971 issue of Americal Magazine